Tuesday, February 26, 2019

This is an excerpt from a post on January 11, 2011. It’s
still true that I only see Fox in hotels, but I’m traveling less than I used
to. I still find the absence of any information or news on Fox a bit shocking,
and the over-coifed and overcaffeinated news readers are still pushing the same
evil agenda in their opinion pieces. That agenda would be that conservatives
are good, peaceful people who only want what is best for America, and anyone
left of about the seventy-yard line is an evil socialist who wishes to do
terrible, violent harm to America and Americans. You’d think people would be
tired of it by now, but you’d be wrong.

Okay, here’s the old blog quote:

“Fox News is always entertaining, especially if you enjoy
getting very angry. This weekend the big news was the shooting in Arizona of a
congresswoman and lots of other people. Boy, that was one talented shooter
right there, what a score he ran up! If he had practiced reloading more diligently,
he could have set some kind of record.

“He’d been complaining about the whole “Big Government”
thing on the Internet, bitching about immigrants and “ignorance,” Jews, and
“them.” He belonged to some kind of organization, “American Renaissance” or
something. Where have I been hearing stuff like this for years?

“Fox News immediately went into heavy damage-control
rotation. The kid, they said, was obviously a lone nut job who could not have
been influenced by political rhetoric because of his insanity. Geraldo called
the shooter a “drug-addled lunatic,” based on the fact that he had failed a
drug screening when he tried to join the Army. It was reported that he had
attended a rally for the congresswoman in 2007, offered as proof that he could
not have been influenced by the last two election cycles. With their best
straight faces on, the Fox news readers reported that “the Left” was trying to
make political capital of the incident by claiming that “Conservatives” were
somehow to blame.

“This painfully obvious deluge of exculpation only drew
attention to the connection between this shooting and things like, “lock and
load,” targets superimposed on politician’s faces (including that of this
congresswoman when Sarah Palin targeted her for defeat by a Tea Party
candidate), “don’t retreat, re-load,” and the nonsense about Second Amendment
remedies. Not to mention the lurid conspiracy festival that is Glen Beck, et
al.

“I’m glad that I don’t have daily access to Fox News, but
it’s okay sometimes to be angered by them. The faces they make! So earnest, so
heartfelt, so desperate to appear intelligent. If it weren’t all so dangerous,
it would be funny.”

Back here in 2019, I’m glad to see that Gabby Giffords is
still getting around okay, reassuring to see that her husband is still at her
side, and interesting to note that her husband, Mark Kelly, is running for John
McCain’s old senate seat. I wish them both well.

Sunday, February 24, 2019

There
are many things wrong with our current justice system. I complain
about them all the time. Our entire bail system, sentencing system,
and prison system are way out of alignment with common sense. We read
about these things piecemeal, so it's hard to track the big picture.
Today it occurs to me that I may not have complained enough about the
sentences being handed out by our current justice system.

Modern
Sentencing Practices

This
is part of the problem of prosecutorial overreach in general.
Prosecutors have gone insane, charging defendants with long lists of
crimes that include things that could never be proven in court. Then
they add it up and make a plea offer: I've got you on all of this
stuff, and it adds up to 225 years in prison, but I'll let you go
with ten years if you plead guilty to the first five things on the
list. Our prisons are filling up with innocent guys who looked over
at their Public Defender, who looked very tired and was taking no
notes, and said sure, I'll take the deal. (Fingers crossed, be out in
five or six!)

Lately
we've really crossed over into the zone of pure science-fiction in
the years that they're giving out. Sentences that amount to life
without the possibility of parole even for younger defendants.

The
Fajitas Caper

Take
poor old Gilberto Escamilla, age 53, down Texas way. He had some kind
of administrative job in a Texas juvenile detention facility, and he
came up with a great idea. At least it sounded like a great idea at
the time. He figured he could order more meat than he needed to feed
the kids and sell off the excess for some cash to supplement his
income. The system was working great for nine years or so and then
they caught him.

He
doesn't sound like a hard guy; he's certainly not a career criminal
type. When they arrested him, he didn't give anyone a hard time. He
confessed, he told them all about it, and he pleaded guilty to save
them the necessity of giving him a trial. All of that usually buys a
defendant a bit of good will at sentencing time, at least it did
before the world went stark-raving insane.

Somebody,
probably the prosecutor, came up with a figure for how much all of
that meat was worth. $1.3 million dollars, they figured. (One
million, three hundred thousand dollars.) That would be $144,000
every year, or about $12,000 every month. We lawyers are not famous
for our math skills, and I'm pretty sure that this prosecutor
misplaced a decimal point or something.

The
Dallas News names the prosecutor as Peter Gilman, Esq., an ADA for
Cameron County, TX. He zoomed straight to hyperbole for his
sentencing suggestion, too. He asked for, and got, a sentence of
fifty years! (50!) Mr. Gilman told the judge, “we must send a
message that theft by public servants warrants a long prison term.”

To
help us consider just how wacky this is, and since we are off into
the realm of sci-fi already, let's crank up the Way-Back machine and
return to the pre-1960s world. How would this case have been handled
back in, let's say, 1960? Eisenhower is still president, and
everybody's panic response is still focused on the Soviet Union.

First,
I'm going to cut that estimate of the value of the meat in half. Even
at half, I doubt that old Gilberto was putting $6,000 in his pocket
every month for nine years, much less the $12,000 from the ADA's
estimate. So half, say $600,000. Let's adjust that for inflation.
Right now you'd be lucky to buy two houses in Hawthorne, California
for $300,000 apiece. In 1960, those same two houses would cost you
about $15,000 apiece, for a total amount stolen that comes to
$30,000. So, old-days Gilberto is arrested for stealing $30,000 worth
of meat over a nine year period. He confesses quickly, and pleads
guilty. Can't just let him off with probation, so we've got to give
him some prison time. I'm thinking that it's a three-to-five.
Remember, there was no force or fear involved, it wasn't robbery,
there was no gun involved. There are no aggravating factors, and we
had the fast guilty plea and remorse in mitigation.

What's
the difference between a 3 to 5, and a 50 straight up, no chaser? The
prosecutors then weren't in a fever to pile on years and fill up the
prisons like our current crop of tough guys.

Does
3 to 5 sound light to you? It could have been less. Stealing a car is
grand theft, and guys would only get a year or two for that back
then. Recall that in the 1957 movie, Jailhouse Rock, Elvis' character
was sentenced to one year for involuntary manslaughter. Which is the
way that it might have turned out, actually. It was a mutual-combat
situation gone wrong, with one man landing on the floor just right
(wrong) and busting his head. So there was an intentional act to harm
from Elvis, the punch, and as a result, someone died. An unintended
result, but there you have it. Involuntary manslaughter. One year!

And
God Help You If You're Black

Last
year a read about a woman who really got a bad break. Her and her
boyfriend got it in their drug-addled heads that if they could get a
little crack business going, they could get a free stash and maybe
make a couple of bucks besides. These people were the walking
definition of small time. They were arrested as soon as prosecutors
had an “act in furtherance” to support a charge of conspiracy to
sell crack cocaine. So they never even made a dollar between them,
and after some kind of judicial process they were sentenced to
hundreds of years. The woman is still in prison, serving a sentence
that I seem to remember as 175 years.

Don't
hold me to facts on that one, but here's one from the Washington
Post, back in 2015.

Sharanda
Jones was almost thirty-years-old in 1999 when she was sentenced to
life in federal prison for her first offense, a non-violent offense
involving powder cocaine. There is no parole in the federal system,
so life is life.

She
brought together a buyer and a seller for a powder cocaine deal.
That's pretty small time right there. Powder was bringing much
shorter sentences than crack, so it doesn't look like such a big
deal. Then those clever prosecutors got a hold of it! It's
enhancements time!

Enhancement!
She was part of a drug conspiracy!

Enhancement!
It's a conspiracy to distribute and sell crack, because she either
knew or should have known that the cocaine was intended to be turned
into crack!

Enhancement!
She had a license to carry a concealed gun, so that's using a gun to
further a criminal conspiracy!

Enhancement!
Prosecutors claimed that she had lied in her defense at the trial!
That's obstruction of justice! (She had only been convicted on one
count out of seven.)

Enhancement!
Prosecutors described her as the leader of the conspiracy! (See how
they do this? They just say it and it magically becomes so.)

By
the time they were done, the mandatory sentencing guidelines forced
the judge to give her life.

Defendant
Is A Child? Not Anymore He's Not!

I'm
not a big believer in miracles myself, but somehow every year a
certain number of children are miraculously transformed into adults
in American courtrooms. It's those mischievous prosecutors again. So
fourteen-year-old Johnny Nobody killed one of his little friends, and
it goes to juvi, and he's free again within ten years or so. What fun
is that? No fun at all. So first mischievous legislators pass laws to
the effect that juveniles may be tried as adults, in adult court,
under certain nebulous circumstances that add up to “if the DA and
the judge feel like it.”

Then
some DA, and then some judge, feel like it, and suddenly,
mysteriously, little Johnny is not just some shit-for-brains little
snot-nose kid, he's fucking Al Capone. He get a trial, and guess
what? He's guilty by a jury of his peers (none of whom are freshmen
in high school, like he is), and the sentencing guideline says, “life
without parole.” Please escort the prisoner to the awaiting van!
And the only mercy that may be shown to the now very contrite and
worried Johnny is that someone in the administration of the prison
will agree to keep him in the infirmary for a few years while prison
life has a chance to toughen him up before he is let loose in the
general population.

Not
Fun; Not Funny

As
Billy Crystal famously said to Stuttering John.

Don't
even get me started about prison labor, and for-profit prisons, and
mass-incarceration in general. Our government is a monopolistic
marriage of venal government officials and the investment class
(corporations are only the sheep disguise for the super-rich wolves).
What's good for them is good for America, and the curb without a
blanket is good enough for the rest of us.

My
conscience is clear, having voted Yellow Dog Democrat since 1972
(George McGovern, a true war hero and a fine man, look it up). Anyone
who was voting otherwise was thinking about Law and Order, or
Soft-on-Communism, or Welfare Queens, or Willie Horton, etc., and
well, who am I to criticize, but you were backing the clampdown my
friend. Now it's your socialism-dependent ass (Medicare and Social
Security much?), and your struggling Gen-X kids, and your bereft
hipster-gig-economy borderline gray-economy debt-slave grandkids, who
are in the vice.

I
hope that you're happy. We made this bed, now some of us have to lie
in it. If we have managed to come this far with neither us, nor any
of our family members suffering medieval prison sentences, then we're
way ahead of the game.

Saturday, February 23, 2019

This song kills, and it proves an interesting point about the old days. I heard this song over the end-credits of the Sopranos (re-runs) on my Bangkok cable TV in about 2010. I immediately made the connection with "The Bristol Stomp," and also the common mistake of thinking that it was Frankie Lymon. After looking it up and reading the entire story, I was amazed. Mostly because I had never heard this song before in my life. I'm pretty sure about that anyway. Maybe it was on the radio, but not in heavy rotation, hovering around the middle of the Billboard Hot 100 or something. That's the point. We missed out on a lot of great records in those days. I lived in New York, so we were lucky in a way. We had four, I think it was four, rock radio stations on the AM dial at the time. WMCA, WABC, WINS, and wasn't there another one? WMGM or something? WGN? Anyway, those three were the most popular. I didn't listen to WWRL until later, that was the black station way over on the right side of the dial. Maybe "the Big RL" played this song. But I never heard it. We were all squeezed into a tightly fitting box back then. Racism was rampant, radio programmers were hustling for the ad money, payola was involved for a long time, many records were regional hits only. In the subsequent decades I've heard a lot of great records that I didn't really have access to in the original period. You had to be in the right place at the right time, you had to know about all of the radio stations that you could only pick up after about ten p.m., you had to have friends that had uncles with access to different records. In other words, you had to be lucky. That lightning didn't strike too often. So thanks to the show runners and directors who are digging up gems like this for their shows. I don't usually praise people for trying desperately to be hip, but in this case go ahead, y'all! Find the good stuff! Share it!

They say that young people are not picking up the guitar at the same rate that they used to. Sales are down. There could be a reason for that. Maybe those young people have heard what has already been done with the electric guitar and decided, hell no, I ain't got nothing to go up against that stuff! To them I say: go for it. Give it a try. There are tons of great guitars out there these days, at great prices. Spend yourself a few hundred bucks and you're in business! These guys stood on the shoulders of giants, but you can climb up and stand on their shoulders! "What man has done, man can do." It could be you scaring off the youngsters years from now.

It's
been about three years now since my father died. I devoted a lot of
blog time early on to complaining about the son-of-a-bitch. Sure, I
was angry, but not without reason. There was very little to recommend
him as a father. He had become disinterested in family life early on,
and after that we hardly saw him and he never spoke with us, his
children. (If cornered, he would speak at us, in long monologues, but
never any real conversations.) I overheard him several times in
conversation with my mother, but I wish that I hadn't been listening.
Those were unremittingly negative affairs, and his references to me
were degrading and disheartening.

Those
years of the blog are full of awful recriminations, based on the fact
that he obviously bore some huge grudge against me, as though I, and
my mother for sure, and who knows, maybe my little sister too, had
personally ruined his life. He always saw himself as being perfect,
and he rarely found anyone who could live up to his standards for a
reasonable human being. My mother failed miserably in his eyes, not
an altogether unreasonable conclusion, and my sister and I went down
the drain with the dirty bathwater. It was a real shit-show. In a
final act of contempt, he left me completely out of his will without
so much as a fair-thee-well.

Why
bring this up now? Why today of all days? Simply, I saw him in a
dream the other night. It was one of those mostly unremembered dreams
that went on and on, including chapters where I revisited old jobs,
scenes where I was again undergoing military training as a recruit,
nothing remotely realistic, old bosses being surprised to see me,
fellow boots being surprised to find a seventy-year-old in their
number. Dad did a walk through, I forget the details. It all made me
wonder, though, what would I really do if dad walked through that
door right now?

Setting
aside, for the moment, that I do not believe that the dead have any
future at all, no future of any kind, only the dreamless sleep of
eternity, identical in its specifics to the future of a dead dog, a
dead tree, a dead worm, a sunken ship, or a dead mushroom. There is
no afterlife, and there are no ghosts. Okay, back to our story.

What
would I say? After so much bitterness and disapproval? I knew
immediately what the answer was. I would greet him cheerfully, give
him a hug and tell him that I loved him and that we had all missed
him. I would ask him what his requirements these days were for the
perfect chair. (He had terrible arthritis in his back, and he was
never really comfortable.) I would apologize for the absence of
bourbon in the house and offer him a short vodka, which he would
accept. Would that be hypocritical of me? Well, no, not really.

Even
assuming that the dead would be privy to all that I had said and
written in the meantime, that is the greeting that he would prefer
and expect. He was always one to create his own world, where he was
king. Besides, we had had a wonderful relationship, to all
appearances, for the last thirty-five years of his life. I hated and
avoided my parents as a teenager and through much of my twenties, but
after that I decided to take the high road. They were my parents,
after all, and just as I had when I was a very young boy, I loved
them. I was them! I was a product of whatever had masqueraded as love
in their relationship. Acceptance and cheerfulness are required of
us. We are expected to be grateful for the gift of life, however
little we make of it or care for it. If our parents were not perfect,
well then, who is? Not me, I can tell you. Who am I to judge? (There
is a terrific argument to be made that I am in a perfect position to
judge, having witnessed the entire conspiracy with all of its acts in
furtherance, and all of its crimes. Let's save that discussion for
another time.)

My
father, hopefully with his hearing restored, would give me a rousing
lecture about something, perhaps a full book report on Tristram
Shandy, death having finally allowed him the time and inclination to
finish it. I would smile, and eventually the conversation would turn
to certain great meals that he has missed, and other drawbacks of
being dead. I would occasionally try to get a word in edgewise, but
he would, as usual, begin to gaze out the window until it was his
turn again. I would smile at that and encourage him towards a subject
that I knew he liked. Like boxers from the 1940s and '50s, the
strange fish-based soups available in Spanish restaurants, or
newspaper humorists from the 1920s and '30s. And I would listen,
happy for the attention.

And
that, my darlings, is why I am such an approval whore to this very
day. Let his words and his tone be insincere or even malicious. Let
them only mimic approval and I will be well satisfied.

Sometimes you listen to a song and it seems to sum up the situation. Maybe your feelings, maybe someone else's feelings, maybe even something closer to the truth than anyone realizes. I listen to this song and I cry, because it punches me in the fucking chest. I'm in the song, but I'm not the singer.

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Welcome to the analog world, where every sound is hand-made, and recorded on magnetic tape, to be pressed into vinyl records and played with a needle vibrating in the grooves. Welcome to the late 1960s. I am not here to sing the praises of the America that gave voice to this wonderful music. I will only mention that as James was singing this song, the very beginnings of the terrible reality that we now inhabit were beginning to form in the minds of a few conservative political scientists, sociologists, economists, historians, philosophers, and public intellectuals. This is when they were beginning to tilt their lances at the windmills of uppity blacks, anti-war protesters, hippies in general, women, and any politicians who believed in compromise and cooperation. They began their program of organizing at the state, the local, and the local-local level, they started their conservative think-tanks, they lined up their donor systems, and they declared war on minorities, the public school system, the Democratic party, higher education, any restraints on corporations or the rich, unions, the New Deal, the social safety net, and the federal government itself. So, what do you think? How are they doing? Our glorious year 2019 looks like a Monopoly game where one player has all of the properties and all of the railroads, with plenty of houses and hotels, and the other players can only hope that they keep landing on Go, or Free Parking, or Community Chest, or Go To Jail, because one more hard landing and it's bankruptcy court for sure.

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

I don't make a science of anything, so let's just say that this video was made "a few years ago." Not too long, recent enough to make a fitting contemporary alternative to K-Pop. These direct descendants of Pink Lady are still working and are still very entertaining. The level of artistic merit and accomplishment exhibited in this video eclipses anything even attempted by K-Pop. This video is visually exciting, it has a sense of humor and playfulness, the backing track is actual music (I mean that it would be musically compelling even if presented without the singing or the visual content). The element of attractive young people is still present, but it has a context that is amusing and engaging on many levels. The variety of music that is available these days to anyone with a wi-fi connection is amazing. You should make the most of it.

Having given Black Pink, and K-Pop, both barrels (see below), I will now admit that in 1976 I was very fond of Pink Lady. This is essentially the same act as Black Pink, except here it is done on a human scale, with a sense of modesty and enthusiasm. The nature of their songs also had more of a connection to the girls' own culture and human life in general. This song is a warning to young girls (same age as the singers) that all men are not to be trusted and don't go around getting smitten by a series of guys who don't really care about you. Hold out and wait for the real deal to come along. Songs these days are much more aggressive, the men and the women in the songs all act like animals, and instant gratification is the rule of the day. Did I get that right? Close, anyway. I admit that there are still some songs that do not rely entirely on grunting and faux sexual tension. For a very brief period in maybe 1977 there was an American TV show called, "Pink Lady and Jeff." Jeff got on the masthead because he spoke English, which neither of the girls could do very well. He was also short, so he didn't tower over the girls. You could see that Pink Lady were two rather normal, polite, nice young women, and capable not only of singing and dancing, but also of delivering sight gags. The show lasted about six episodes.

I understand, to some extent, the appeal of K-Pop. It's all very glossy, and the young people who man the act interchangeably are attractive. Black Pink? Did I get that wrong? Is it just one word? At least there are only four of them. Some of these modern Asian acts fill the stage. Negativity alert! I find all of these K-Pop acts synthetic and unappealing. It's all so manufactured. The acts generally do synchronize the dance moves within an inch of their lives, and that's the point. They achieve this success of motion by submitting themselves to countless hours of slavedriving by the ruthless businessmen who own the act and all of its work product. Any hint of scandal, or even the suggestion of a private life at all, and it's back to the mountains for that poor kid! These young men and women are intended to be devotional objects first, and unattainable sex objects second. The acts are so devoid of musical merit that sometimes I wonder why there is any singing at all. Just play a click-track and let the kids gyrate. Bulletin: never appear to be trying to be cool. Every K-Pop act that I have watched has been guilty of this. Trying to be cool creates the opposite situation. Trying to be cool is the least cool thing that anyone can do. American Bandstand Rating: I give it a five, because no one fell down.

Sunday, February 10, 2019

I'm
no Francophile, generally, although there is much to admire about the
race. They are a great movie making people, for one thing. They truly
excel at matters cinematic. Is that, perhaps, damning with feint
praise? Could be. There is, after all, the French Revolution to
consider. That was a two steps forward, two steps back, great leap
forward moment that we should all be grateful for.

I
will ashamedly admit that after fifteen years in Thailand I can read
French much better than I can read Thai. I have never studied the
language, although I have watched a great many of their movies in the
original French (with subtitles). When I proctor tests, I love to
try to read the French passages in reading comprehension tests. I get
a very good sense of the passage, reading clearly many words in each
sentence. This is not some kind of miraculous osmosis; it is merely a
byproduct of having a very good vocabulary in English. After all,
modern English owes more to the French language than it does to any
language of the original Celts or Brits, or any of the prior
conquerors, such as the Romans or the Germans (honorable mention to the Vikings).

It
would be worth the effort to learn enough French to read Rimbaud and
Baudelaire in the original. Translating poetry is such a crap-shoot,
or buying translations of poetry is, anyway. Maybe read some of that
guy Voltaire too, he seems like a winner.

I
think this is a quote from Voltaire's Candide:

“I
have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one, 'O Lord,
make my enemies ridiculous,' and God granted it.”

That's
funny stuff, I'll be the first to admit.

I
also limit my praying to one short prayer of my own invention:

“Lord,
thank you for never letting the worst happen.”

If
I can still make that prayer of thanks, at the age of seventy, I am
truly beloved of God.

The pre-Who WHO at their finest. This must have been the tail end of the High Numbers run. I've shared this before, but I'm not sure that I've shared this video. Great still photos of the boys, way back when it was all for fun. Rock bands tend to rock harder before money issues rear their ugly heads. The bands are more enthusiastic and more sincere when they're just in it for the girls and to avoid boring jobs.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

I
Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I'll Get It
Myself), Part I, by James Brown.

I've
been living in Thailand long enough to know my way around a few
things. Early on I visited a lot of schools out in the rice fields.
Taught a lot of classes out there, too. I learned a lot about the
teachers and the students.

There
was one school in particular that I liked a lot, and even after I had
moved to Bangkok I would visit that little school in the rice field
every year or two. It was a school for grades K through 6, and there
were children that I had known all the way from grade 1 or 2 to grade
6. There were a few that I knew to be very intelligent children,
based on clear evidence in lessons that I had taught their classes,
but you'd never know it just to see what they had learned in eight
years at that school (Thailand's system features two years of
Kindergarten). They hadn't learned anything, because no one really
cared. They were just going to be farmers anyway.

I
am reminded of those children thinking of Mr. Brown and Mr. Smalls.

Robert
Smalls was born a slave, so educating him was forbidden by law. He
turned out to be a highly intelligent man in spite of that omission
in his youth. He made himself a hero in the Civil War, and a
self-educated hero to the entire American nation thereafter. It's a
great story. You can look it up.

James
Brown was born in Georgia. It seems that he was put in the position
of raising himself from an early age. It is apparent that he had a
hardscrabble childhood, to say the very least. He also turned out to
be a highly intelligent man, and he made himself a success by sheer
force of will.

I
hope that some of those really bright Thai children found ways to
rise above people's expectations the way that these two men did.

Here's
what Robert Smalls had written on his tombstone:

“My
race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this
country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they
need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

Ain't
it the truth! I've been saying it on this blog for more than ten
years now. Anyone can win a poker game with a Full House, Queens over
Tens. It takes a special talent to hang in the game all night if your
best hand was Aces and Eights, and usually you were lucky to pull a
low pair. Black Americans have shown incredible resilience, talent,
energy, and resourcefulness, and they get precious little recognition
for their accomplishments.

The
above song proves that James Brown and Robert Smalls were on the same
page regarding black Americans. Just even up that playing field, and
we'll be fine.

Mr.
Smalls had to take many life-threatening chances to build his
eventual success. He was a man who would not take “no” for an
answer. He stood up, repeatedly, and does anyone doubt that he faced
severe opposition? Mr. Brown had to face a lot of the old Jim Crow,
and a lot of patronizing from people that he wouldn't let shine his
shoes (I'm sure that he was very particular about who shined his
shoes). What they shared was the deep conviction that they were as
good as anybody, whatever anybody else said or thought.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

I
was born in New York City. So were my parents, and their parents. To
the best of my knowledge, all of my great-grandparents were born
overseas. A very limited number of countries were involved, but I
have never had any connection with any of them, except that I have
visited Germany twice (two great-grandparents were born there).

I
was a baby in Rosedale, Borough of Queens, out by Idlewild Airport.
After a year or so we moved to the north shore of Queens, right on
the East River, close to La Guardia Airport. I attended the local
Catholic grammar school and a nearby Catholic high school. I had a
New York City address and a New York drivers' license when I joined
the Navy and when I was discharged (Honorable). I returned home, and
resumed my life as a New Yorker. I attended the City University of
New York, and I got married in New York City. Our first son was born
in New York City. I received five of
the seven sacraments in our local Catholic church.

You
hardly notice how terrible the New York weather is until you are
about twenty. Before that, it's the weather that you know, so you're
used to it, and young people are not bothered by extremes of weather
anyway. Hot? Okay, it's hot, so what? Cold? You hardly feel the cold
until you are fully grown. It's that “fires of youth burn hot”
thing. Snow is fun when you are a kid, you get days off from school,
the cold is nothing, it's all fun and games! It all hits you suddenly
in your mid-twenties. The cold hurts; the extreme heat and humidity
are annoying; you have to get to work; you have to get your kids to
school, if school is open; you probably have to drive around in
whatever kind of weather presents itself. At that point, for many of
us, the fun is over, the spell is broken. I had spent countless hours
in all of the great museums, and I had enjoyed hundreds of movies
that one cannot find on view in other places, and I had had my fill
of big buildings and all of that, and it was time to go. Time for the
entire family to go to a place where just running a simple family
life wasn't so Goddamned hard.

I
had seen San Diego, California as a sailor, and my wife had visited
Los Angeles. We had both seen California at the height of winter.
It's about eighty degrees during the daylight hours, with the palm
trees and the beautiful ocean and everything. The last straw for us
was visiting the school where our son was about to start
Kindergarten. It looked like a prison. There was heavy protective
grating on all of the windows, and the school yard was full of broken
glass. That night we had a serious talk and decided, yeah,
California, let's allow the boy to start Kindergarten in Los Angeles.
We decided on Los Angeles because it was the easiest city to come
down on your feet and hit the ground running, making a living
beginning in the first week or ten days. It turned out just that way.

That
move occurred in the mid-1970s, and since that time I have not held a
New York drivers' license, nor any other kind of New York license. I
have never owned real property in New York. Since that move, I have
neither had a New York address, nor have I paid any New York taxes or
utility bills. After that it was California all the way.

I
immediately obtained a California drivers' license and began to pay
California utilities and California taxes. We very quickly bought a
home, and I owned real property in California for almost forty years.
I attended law school and obtained a license to practice law in
California. I still have it. I also still have my California drivers'
license. I have not, however, resided in California for about twelve
years.

During
this last period my residence has been in Thailand. I travel on a
current United States passport. I observe all of the legal niceties,
possessing up to date visas and work permits. I own a condominium in
Bangkok. I am married to a Thai woman. I have not applied for
permanent resident status, and I have no present intention to apply
for Thai citizenship. I am trusting, in other words, that I will be
allowed to remain in Thailand on one kind of visa or another for the
remainder of my life. When the day comes that I am no longer working,
I qualify easily for either a married-to-a-Thai-national visa or a
retirement visa.

All
of this is beginning to feel somewhat problematic. I am beginning to
wonder if there is too much trust involved. In my darkest hours I
become afraid that I may become stateless. The world in general, and
so many governments in particular, are changing very quickly, in ways
that do not necessarily favor an individual in my situation. I am
lucky to have a few bucks, but I have nowhere near enough money to
open all doors with a smile.

I
do receive Social Security benefits, so they at least believe me to
be an American citizen, and a particular American citizen at that. I
lost my Social Security card forty years ago, but they still
recognize me. They know where I reside; I get mail from them that is
sent to my Bangkok address. My residence is not a problem under
current rules. (Underline CURRENT RULES.)

I
have no meaningful ties with New York at this point.

I
am still on the roles of California lawyers. The California Bar
Association also lists my Bangkok address on their web site. That
must qualify as a connection with the state, but will it be enough
for me to renew my drivers' license?

As
so often happens, I am worrying too much about this. I should be
fine. I have already renewed my passport at the local American
Embassy. I suppose that I can dummy up an address for a California
drivers' license when the time comes. I worry, though, because I have
never been adept at reading the tea leaves in such matters. I am too
often surprised when the ice starts cracking under my shoes. And
those are only the potential legal problems. There's an emotional
component here as well.

Where
the hell do I belong? If you listened to me speak one English
sentence, you would ask me, “so, what part of New York are you
from?” My accent, vocabulary, and attitude in general are very New
York. That's “Noo Yawk” for those of us who know what's up, doc.
It's been twenty years since I set foot in the place, though. By now
I'd just walk around with my head on a swivel complaining about the
prices like some hayseed.

I
lived in California longer than I did in New York, and if I were to
return to the 'States I'd prefer to live in California, but there's
no way that I could afford it. I'd be lucky to sustain life in a
trailer up in Death Valley, and between my typical old man medical
bills and the need to buy medical insurance for my handicapped Thai
wife I'd go completely broke in short order.

That
leaves Thailand, and luckily I do like it here. Things are amazingly
affordable. My Thai has gotten to the point that Thai people can
actually understand most of what I say in Thai, as long as the
subject under discussion is simple. That's fine; that's where most
conversations live. I've started to study again, wishing to expand my
vocabulary and improve my reading skills. There are a great many
foreigners here, most with Thai wives and many also having dependent
Thai children. We are most often a boost to our local economies. Most
Thai people are anything but xenophobic. They tolerate foreigners
very well. It's a crossroads country, so they've been inundated with
foreigners for thousand of years already. If we, the foreigners,
learn to smile, be polite, speak a bit, and respect monks and the
royal family, we are probably okay.

I'm
starting to feel like a citizen of the world, but I don't think that
there is any recognized paperwork for that as yet. I believe that I
could make a good argument for that status. My experience of the
world has spanned the globe. I speak German, and I have studied
German in Germany and on another occasion visited my ex-wife's family
there. My German is rusty, but I can still easily speak with German
or Austrian tourists or airline seatmates when the opportunity
arises. Even my German grammar is still okay. Thai is a tonal
language, and I can assure you that the tones will kick your ass for
a few years. I've been here fifteen years now, if you include my two
Peace Corps years before I finally moved back. Many foreigners speak
better Thai than I do, but many more can hardly speak at all. I'm
doing okay, and I get a full measure of credit for it. Even my
English has profited greatly by my Thai experience. I've done a lot
of editing of academic papers to smooth out the broken English and
make it read like native English.

Getting
through these last stages of life is never easy, but I've got a good
chance to make it okay. Just avoid the worst and it'll all work out.
Avoid the worst medical results; avoid serious accidents; avoid
political upheaval; keep coastal flooding at bay; stay out of
trouble.

Sunday, February 3, 2019

While we're on the subject of numbers. I love Cornelius; the man is deep. There is some tension in the comments as to the time scheme of this cut. There is the suggestion that it is 6/6, which would be appropriate and therefore vaguely comforting. My guess is 6/8, with two bars of 4/4 thrown in every now and then for comic relief. But I'm no Mozart, so make up your own mind.

This is a nice cut from an early Manfred Mann LP. It's all very professional, very commercial, but there's more to it. It has a spark that was lacking in professional, commercial pop music from just a couple of years earlier. Manfred Mann are not unique in this. Something was happening in pop music beginning in 1963 and coming to full fruition in '64 or '65. There had been a dead spot that started in 1958 or so and lasted almost five years. Then, all of a sudden, "it's alive!!!"You can see it clearly if you listen to the first recorded efforts of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, any of the bigs, and also in the work of the also rans. Their early material was on the dull side. Then listen to the work of the same bands in 1964 and '65. What had been competent and professional and all kinds of other boring adjectives suddenly became not only proficient, but also wildly enthusiastic and a lot more creative. This phenomenon was observable in America too. After the dull days of Neil Sedaka, Fabian, and Frankie Avalon (relieved, of course, by the fabulous work that was restricted to the black charts), there suddenly appeared the Beach Boys and all kinds of records backed by the Wrecking Crew in L.A., and the similar studio outfits in New York, New Orleans, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals. Dr. Frankenstein had found the right formula of chemicals and energy fields. It was all alive!!!And no, it was not the Beatles who drove this revolution. They were influenced along with everyone else, benefiting from the work of Phil Spector, Bobby Robinson (Fury Records), Ike Turner, Al Bell (Stax Records), and a host of others, who had been filling up the mid-range of the pop charts with the wonderful antidote to that bland, awful pop music at the top of the charts. Young musicians in America and Europe, and also in places like Japan, Brazil, and Indonesia, were listening closely to those records. The rest is history! Manfred Mann were underrated, a common fate for English Invasion bands. They were serious musicians, detail oriented, and very entertaining. Go find a greatest hits CD and buy it. You won't be disappointed.

Friday, February 1, 2019

Here's one of the "written and performed by Steve Winwood and Traffic" cuts from the soundtrack. There are some nice images from the movie in the video, including the occasional glimpse of Judy Geeson.

What
are the mechanisms involved? What is the difference? Why are they so
expensive? I can't be the only one who is considering these things.

CT
Scans

“Computed
Tomography,” or “Computerized Tomography.” I don't think that
they've made up their minds yet. You may remember, like I do, that
these were once called CAT Scans, which would be “Computerized
Axial Tomography.” That cat thing is out of fashion now.

These
are just fancy X-ray machines. All modern X-ray machines are
computerized to some extent, but there's probably a difference. Maybe
I should look up tomography. The point is, the mechanism by which a
CT Scan creates an image is X-rays.

That's
why they do their work so quickly, making things a lot easier for the
patient. They do a much better job of illustrating bones and other
hard tissue. They're not much good for soft tissue inquiries. X-ray
machines in general are using a lot less X-ray than in the old days,
so it's probably not enough to worry about. About the same as a long
plane flight probably. That's just a guess.

Sources
all say that CT Scans are cheaper than MRIs, but then they all give
about the same range of prices for both things: between $1,200 and
$3- to $4,000. (See note below re: prices.)

MRIs

“Magnetic
Resonance Imaging.” These create an image by building up a powerful
magnetic field and then launching high-frequency radio pulses through
that field. This all takes a while, and the patient is required to
show great patience while laying in the close-fitting tube for a half
of an hour or so, without moving. Then there's the booming noise.
I've never had an MRI, and I'm not looking forward to the
eventuality.

MRIs
do a great job of imaging soft tissue, like muscles and internal
organs. They'll give the docs the location of the bones, but not as
much detail on the hard tissue as the CT Scan. Great care must be
taken to avoid placing anything made from metal into the tube with
the patient. That would be a metal fork in the microwave moment. This
includes Pacemakers and piercings, so there's that to consider.

Sources
give the price range for both procedures as being very close, with
the upper range for MRIs exceeding that for CT Scans by about one
third. Neither the magnetic field nor the radio pulses have the power
to hurt you, so anyone overly concerned about X-rays might consider
that.

MRIs
and Tattoos

Here's
where mourning becomes electra. Here's where it gets weird. It turns
out that any tattoo from more than twenty years ago is liable to have
metal particles in some of the ink. My guess is that the black ink
would be the worst offender. As one recedes in time, past twenty to
thirty years ago, and on to forty, the likelihood of encountering
metal increases. My own tattoo, for instance, is forty-six years old,
so it's probably full of metal.

These
tattoos can exhibit terrible reactions to the magnetic field, ranging
from a mild burning sensation, up through considerable pain, and on
to great pain with some flashing and scarring. I had never heard this
one before. Forewarned is forearmed, however, so if the situation
comes up I can mention it to the doctor. It's a very rare doctor who
will listen to you regarding medical matters, but they do exist.

Hipsters,
take note.

Prices

It
turns out that they are so expensive because both hospitals and
medical insurance companies are now run on a for-profit basis, even
the ones that still call themselves non-profits, and they work
together to gouge the patient, and each other, for as much as
possible in every situation.

The
price of an identical MRI in any particular medical marketplace will
vary wildly depending on such factors as the income of the patient,
the health insurance carried by the patient, the identity of the
payer, and many other factors that are unknown to me, being mysteries
of the modern medical-industrial complex. If the estimates are
accurate at all, you could be charged anywhere between $1,200 and
$4,000 for the identical procedure on the identical machine. I would
bet the afore mentioned tattoo that the upper range is subject to
wild spikes.

If
you are a careful shopper, there is an easy work-around for this
price gouging.

Doctors
are now firmly in the category of “disposable workers.” With
tuition being so high, many doctors graduate with frightening levels
of debt. Hospitals pay doctors as little as possible. Some doctors do
the math and realize that they could set up some kind of business of
their own and make twice as much money while doing less than half as
much work. One way to do this is to invest in an MRI machine and set
yourself up in a strip mall near a large population center. “Garden
State Imaging Center” or something. This is totally legal.

Many
of the doctors who do this are merely clever, but others come from
one of the many minorities in America. They get sick of patients up
at the hospital asking for “the white doctor” all the time.

If
your own doctor is worth his salt, he'll tell you about a good MRI
mill himself. You can find them on your own without much trouble,
because, like I say, it's legal. You then get a specific prescription
from your doctor requesting the MRI and giving all of the information
necessary to get a result that is useful. Just make an appointment,
and the fully board-certified doctor at the MRI center will do the
imaging. You get the results, probably on a CD, and take it back to
your doctor for a reading. These private MRI clinics charge under one
thousand dollars, so the savings can be considerable.

My
Dedication to Public Service

I
don't make a nickel on this blog, and if you take a quick look at the
history over on the right side you will have to agree that writing it
has been a whole lot of work. Mostly, I write all of this prose
because it helps to knock down the general level of negative ideation
that I must deal with on a daily basis. There is also, however, an
element of the pure, kind-hearted desire to be useful to my fellow
Americans.

My
sincerest desire is that someone among the couple of dozen people who
may read this post found it informative in a way that was helpful.

stat counter

About Me

Mr. C is: a reformed lawyer; a religious atheist; a useful "Handy Man;" an amateur social scientist; a beloved teacher; a well liked husband and father; Ambassador Emeritus from, and to, Planet X; a freelance professor; taxi driver to the stars (Joe DiMaggio and Ronald McDonald, both out of uniform); an excellent fire fighter; an enthusiastic but untalented musician; an experienced counselor; a top-notch disk jockey; an all around get-along-guy; a cunning linguist; a would-be lifestyle victim; a Masonic wannabe; a frequent reader; Professor Irwin Corey's Ph.D. adviser; an accomplished driver and motorcyclist; a famous rockologist; a reliable but indifferent bullshit detective; a poor speller; a proud United States Navy veteran (honorably discharged, barely); the Ayatollah of Ass-o-Hola; a drug legend; a Returned Peace Corps volunteer (Thailand); a generally charming man; nationally and internationally known from coast to coast; a legend in his own mind; a cultural-anthropological critic-at-large; an avenging angel who coolly bides his time; Soul Brother number 37; and a friend to the poor.